31 October 2013

The battle for audience attention

History is being made today with the televising of court of appeal proceedings.And about time too is my reaction, because the prohibition on video and tape-recording in courts once stood in the way of my attempts to study court-room language. American colleagues had no problem in assembling large collections of tape-recorded hearings - and were generous enough to supply us with copies - on which, more HERE.My interest in working out what turned jurors on and off led me to start recording political speeches and to focus on bursts of applause - as clapping was fairly concrete evidence that listeners were not only awake but also approved of what had just been said. This led to publication of a book that was to take my life in a different direction - and, later on to books aimed at showing people how to use what we had learnt about the main techniques in their own speeches and presentations.So, to mark the day when I ought to be thinking about collecting video-tapes of court of appeal proceedings (but probably won't), I thought I'd post the beginnings of what became of some of the original research when applied to speaker-audience interaction more generally - from Lend Me Your Ears, Chapter 2...The Battle for Audience AttentionKeeping Listeners
Awake and Engaged

Most of us find it
easy enough to discuss aspects of our life or work with one or two colleagues,
friends, or even with complete strangers. But it’s a very different story when
it comes to standingup and talking about the same subjects to an audience.
Confident communicators suddenly find themselves crippled by nerves, the
normally articulate sound muddled and confused, and enthusiasts for their
subjects come across as dull, boring and monotonous. You will almost certainly
have seen this happen. It may even have happened to you – but you may not be
quite sure exactly why

it happens.

This difference in
our level of confidence and effectiveness, depending on whether we’re speaking
in a conversation or to an audience, is so great and so debilitating for so
many people that it demands an explanation. The chapters in Part I set out to
provide an answer by showing that there is what amounts to a ‘language of
public speaking’. Less complicated and much easier to learn than a foreign
language, it involves subtle deviations from everyday speech that can make life
difficult for anyone who isn’t fully

aware of them.
Knowing what these deviations are is an essential

first step towards
understanding and mastering the techniques of

effective
speech-making.

Different ways
of speaking

Speaking in public is
obviously different from just about any other form of communication we ever get
involved in. The sense of unease experienced when making a speech or
presentation tends to be accompanied by a vague realisation that our normal,
everyday style of speaking doesn’t seem to be working in quite the way we
expect. Speaking to an audience seems to require skills otherthan those that
serve us so well during the rest of our talking lives. The trouble is that it’s
not always immediately obvious what these are, or why our normal resources are
failing us. This is why we can find ourselves, often good communicators in
every other way, struggling and bewildered against the tide of polite
indifference washing over us from an audience who would clearly rather be
somewhere else.

One reason for this
is that our ability to speak is something that we have taken for granted since
infancy. Speaking to an audience requires different skills from those that
serve us so well during the rest of our talking lives.The trouble is that it is not
immediately obvious what these are, let alone why our normal resources are
failing us.

Apart from academic
researchers who specialise in the study of talk, hardly anyone ever gives much
thought to the detailed mechanics of how speech works. Most people’s technical
understanding of conversation is similar to their technical
understanding of what’s involved in riding a bicycle. Both are things we can do,
without so much as a second thought, but the basic principles of how to do them
are far from easy to put into words.

An ability to use
language is often cited as the crucial factor distinguishing humans from other
animals. But it is probably more accurate to say that the crucial factor is an
ability to converse – and it’s
more than mere ability. As conversationalists we are absolute experts. We
listen, we understand, we contribute, all within fractions of a second. And we’re
able to do this because

we start learning to
converse from the moment we make our first sounds.

The type of speech we
first learn as infants is conversation. As we grow older, it is the speaking
skills of conversation that we spend most time practising and developing. In
effect, we become specialists in conversational techniques, and it’s as
conversationalists that we spend the vast majority of our talking lives. Only
very occasionally do we have to speak in ways that are clearly different from
conversation, such as in classrooms, courtrooms, places of worship,
interviews, meetings, debates, speeches or presentations. As narrow specialists
in conversation, it’s hardly surprising that we feel so uneasy when we have to
speak in these less familiar situations. Nor is it surprising that the few who
do develop these more specialised speaking skills – such as teachers, lawyers,
politicians or clerics – come to be viewed as (and paid as) professionals....(to be continued).

WELCOME to a blog about speaking and communication

Some of what I write gets published and some doesn't, but here you can see samples of both. If you'd like to know more about what I do, click the link to the Atkinson Communications website below, where there are also links to everything posted on this blog in the first few years since it started.